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BOSTON – A trial that many feared would never take place opened in a packed federal courtroom Wednesday when a prosecutor gave a cold-blooded recitation of what he called decades of terror inflicted on the city by its most notorious crime boss, James “Whitey” Bulger.

In a chilling opening statement in a case that has transfixed much of New England, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly described extortion victims chained to chairs, tortured, shot and buried in a cellar. He told jurors of strangled women and of teeth pulled to prevent identification of corpses.